Moscow

We are now in Moscow--doing a lot of sleeping so far. We had no idea that the Moscow airport was so far from the city center of Moscow. The traffic was bad so it took us 2 hours to get from the airport to our hotel.

Once checked in, we found the nearest american restaurant (because Nate was dying for a hamburger) and took a 15 minute walk to TGI Fridays. It sure hit the spot for both of us! It felt good to sit in a restaurant that was "like home." Outside of the language and the smoking vs non-smoking section of the restaurant, we could've been in America.

Speaking of smoking, we had completely forgotten how sheltered we are at home in terms of the no smoking laws we have. Quite a jolt back into what the rest of the world is like. It seems that more people smoke here than those that do not. We keep wondering what the lung cancer rate is here. Do the people not know what they are doing to their body? Have they not been educated? Does their goverment get a profit from cigarettes so they have not informed their people of what a terrible risk they are taking? We're baffled. It has certainly been an adjustment for my nose, lungs etc. I do fine in our hotel room, but as soon as I walk of our room, my nose runs and my chest hurts. What a woosie I am!

Back to our adventures...on our way back to the hotel, we stopped in at a bookstore. We found a Star Wars book in Russian and think our boys will really like that. We also picked up two books that we think our daughter will like. One of them we have at home in English so that will be neat to compare them.

Tomorrow we plan to do some sightseeing. We'll see if we can even find the one Moscow Starbucks on our adventures...

II Corinthians 5:7 "For we walk by faith, not by sight."